Then he tried the "Coo-ee" which Sergeant Steel had taught him, under the impression that it would carry farther. But the keep of a fourteenth century castle and thirteen feet of sh.e.l.l lime and rubble masonry are proof against the most willing boyish voice in the world.

So General Napoleon made no more impression upon his friends than his great original would have done had he summoned the Old Guard from the cliffs of St. Helena.

But the younger warrior was not discouraged. He had tried one plan and it had failed. He sat down again to think what was the next thing to be done.

He remembered the thick "hunk" of bread he had put in the pocket of his jacket in the morning. He could not eat it at breakfast, so greatly had he been excited by the impending conflict; so, to prevent waste, and to make all safe, he had put it in his pocket. Besides, in the absence of his father, it was not always possible to be in for meals. And--well, one never knew what might happen. It was best to be prepared for all emergencies.

With trembling hand he felt for the "hunk." Alas! the jacket pocket was empty, and hung flat and limp against his side. The staff of life must have fallen out in the progress of the fray, or else one of the enemy had despoiled him of his treasure.

A quick thought struck his military mind, accustomed before all else to deal with questions of commissariat. It was just possible that the bread might have fallen out of his pocket when the Smoutchies were letting him down so roughly into the dungeon of the castle.

He went directly underneath the aperture, from which a faint light was distributed over the uneven floor of hard trampled earth whereon a century's dry dust lay ankle deep.

There--there, almost under his feet, was his piece of bread!

Hugh John picked it up, blew the dust carefully off, and wiped the surface with his handkerchief. It was a good solid piece of bread, and would have served Caesar the Potwalloper for at least two mouthfuls.

With care it might sustain life for an indefinite period--perhaps as much as twenty-four hours.

So, in accordance with the best traditions, the prisoner divided his provision with his pocketknife, as accurately as possible under the circ.u.mstances. He cut it into cubes of about an inch square, exactly as if he had been going to lay down rat poison.

Napoleon Smith was decidedly beginning to recover his spirits. For one thing, he thought how very few boys had ever had his chances. A Latude of twelve was somewhat unusual in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and even in the adjacent islands. He began at once to write his memoirs in his head, but found that he could not get on very well, because he could not remember which one of his various great-grandmothers had danced with Bonny Prince Charlie at Edinburgh.

This for a loyal prisoner was insuperable, so he gave the memoirs up.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE DROP OF WATER.

From fruitless genealogy he turned to the further consideration of his supplies. He wanted water, and in a dungeon surrounded by lime-stone walls and founded upon a rock, it seemed likely he would continue to want it. But at the farthest corner, just where the roof approached most closely to the floor, Hugh John could hear a _pat_, _pat_ at regularly recurring intervals. He put his hand forward into the darkness, and immediately a large drop of water fell on the back of it. He set his tongue to it, and it tasted cool and good after the fustiness of the woollen gag.

Hugh John thrust forward his hand again, palm upwards this time, and was rewarded by finding that every time he counted ten slowly a large drop, like those in the van of a thunder storm, splashed into the hollow. It was tedious work, but then a dungeon is a slow place, and he had plenty of time. He crawled forward to be nearer to the source of supplies, and while trying to insinuate his head sideways underneath like a dog at a spout, to catch the drop in his mouth without the intervention of a warm hand, he felt that his knee was wet. He had inadvertently placed it in a small natural basin into which the drop had been falling for ages. Hugh John set his lips to it, and never did even soda-water-and-milk, that nectar of the meagre and uncritical G.o.ds of boyhood, taste sweeter or more refreshing.

After he had taken a good solid drink he cleaned the sand from the bottom carefully, and there, ready to his hand, was a stone cup hollowed out of a projecting piece of the rock on which the castle was built. This well-anch.o.r.ed drinking-cup was shaped like the pecten-sh.e.l.l of pilgrimage, and set with the broad fluted end towards him.

Thus fortified with meat and drink, for he had devoured the first of his rat-poison squares, or rather bolted it like a pill, General Napoleon sat down to reckon up his resources. He found himself in possession of some ten feet of fairly good cord, which had evidently been used for bringing cattle to the fatal Black Sheds of butcher Donnan. The prisoner carefully worked out all the knots, in order to get as much length as possible. He did not, indeed, see how such a thing could help him to escape, but that was not his business, for in the authorities a rope was always conveyed into the cell of the pining captive, generally in an enormous pie.

Hugh John felt that he was indeed a pining captive, but it was the pie and not the rope he pined for. His dungeon was downstairs, and he did not see how a rope could possibly help him to get out, unless there was somebody at the top of the bottle ready to haul him up.

He tried his voice again, and made the castle ring in vain. Alas! only the echoes came back, the pert jackdaws cried out insolently far above him and mocked him in a clamorous crowd from the ruined gables.

Then his mind went off all of itself to the pleasant dining-room of the house of Windy Standard, where Prissy and Sir Toady Lion would even now be sitting down to tea. He could smell the nice refreshing bouquet of the hot china pot as Janet Sheepshanks poured the tea into the cups in a golden brown jet, and then "doused" in the cream with a liberal hand.

"I declare I could drink up the whole tea-pot full without ever stopping," said Hugh John aloud, and then started at the sound of his own voice.

He waited as long as possible, and then ate the second of his squares of bread. Then he drank the mouthful of water which had gathered in the stone sh.e.l.l. While he was in there underneath the dungeon eaves, he put out his hand to feel how far off the wall was. He expected easily to reach it, but in this he failed entirely. His hand was merely stretched out into s.p.a.ce, while the drop fell upon his head, and then upon his neck, as he leaned farther and farther over in his efforts to find a boundary wall.

He had noticed from the first that the floor immediately beneath the cup was quite dry all round, but it had not occurred to him before that if the drop fell constantly and regularly the basin must overflow in some direction. Hugh John was not logical. It is true that he liked finding out things by his five senses, but then that is a very different affair. Sammy Carter tried to argue with him sometimes, and make matters clear to him by pure reason. The first time Hugh John usually told him to "shut it." The second he simply hammered the logician.

Finally, to solve the mystery, Hugh John crawled completely over his drinking fountain and kneeled in the damp sand at the back of the basin. Still he could discover no wall. Next, he put his hand forward as far as it would reach out, and--he _could feel no floor_.

Very gingerly he put his foot over the edge, and at once found himself on the top step of a steep, narrow, and exceedingly uneven stair. The explorer's heart beat fast within him. He knew what it was now that he had found--a secret pa.s.sage, perhaps ending in an enchanted cave; perhaps (who knew) in a pirate's den. He thought of Nipper Donnan's last words about the beast as big as a calf which his father had seen going down into the dungeon. It was a lie, of course; it must be, because Nipper Donnan said it; but still it was certainly very dark and dismal down there.

Hugh John listened with his ear pointed down the stair, and his mouth open. He certainly did hear a low, rushing, hissing sound, which might be the Edam water surrounding the old tower, or--the breathing of the Black Beast.

If Hugh John had had even Toady Lion with him, he would have felt no fears; but to be alone in silence and darkness is fitted to shake stronger nerves than those of a twelve-year-old boy. It was getting late, as he knew by the craving ache in his stomach, and also by the gradual dusking of the hole twelve feet above his head, through whose narrow throat he had been let down in the forenoon.

Now at first the Smoutchy boys had not meant to leave Hugh John in the dungeon all night, but only to give him a thorough fright for his hardihood in daring to attack their citadel. But Nipper Donnan's natural resolution was ever towards cruelty of all sorts, and it was turned to adamant upon discovering that Donald, the captured hostage and original cause of conflict, had in some mysterious way escaped.

This unexpected success of the attacking party he attributed, of course, to Hugh John, whom, in spite of his youth, he well knew to be the leading spirit. Sir Toady Lion was never so much as suspected--a fact which would have pleased that doughty warrior but little had he known it.

In the afternoon Nipper had gone to Halkirk Tryst to bring home two bullocks, which Butcher Donnan had bought there the day before; but his father becoming involved in some critical cattle-dealing transaction, for which he was unable to obtain satisfaction in cash, resolved that Nipper should wait till the next day, when he hoped to be able to accompany him home in person. So engrossed was Nipper with the freaks of the fair, the Aunt-Sallies, the shooting-galleries, and miscellaneous side-shows and ghost illusions, that he quite forgot all about our hero immured in the dungeon of the Castle of Windy Standard.

Even had he remembered, he would certainly have said to himself that some of the other boys would be sure to go and let him out (for which interference with his privileges he would a.s.suredly punch their heads to-morrow!)--and that in any case it served the beggar right.

Probably, however, his father (had Nipper thought fit to mention the matter to him), would have taken quite a different view of the situation; for the butcher, with all his detestation of the owner of the Windy Standard estate, held Mr. Picton Smith in a wholesome awe which almost amounted to reverence.

So it came about that none approached the castle all that afternoon; for the boys of Nipper's band were afraid to venture upon the castle island in the absence of their redoubtable chief, while the servants of Windy Standard House sought for the vanished in quite other directions, being led astray by the innocent a.s.sertions of Toady Lion, who had last seen Hugh John defending himself gallantly against overwhelming numbers in the corner of the field nearest to the town, and at least half a mile as the crow flies from the castle on the island.

CHAPTER XX.

THE SECRET Pa.s.sAGE.

For a full hour Hugh John sat on the top step of the stairs, or went back and forward between these and the narrow circular opening so high above his head, which was now filled with a sort of ruddy haze, the sign that the sun was setting comfortably and sedately outside, behind the smooth green hills in which the Cheviots broke down into the Solway Marshes. It was not so much that the boy dared not descend into the secret pa.s.sage. Rather he did not wish to confront the blankness of disappointment. The steps might lead nowhere at all. They might drop off suddenly into the depths of a well.

To prove to himself that he was quite calm, and also that he was in no hurry, Hugh John ate the third of his bread-squares and drank the water which had meantime collected in the stone sh.e.l.l. Heroes always refreshed themselves thus before an adventure.

"'None knoweth when our lips shall touch the blessed bread again!'

This prog's too hanged dry for anything!"--that was what Hugh John said, quoting (partly) from the "Life and Death of Arthur the King."

Then feeling that mere poetry was off and that the time for action had definitely come, he tied to his rope a large fallen stone which lay in a corner, and crawling over the sh.e.l.l to the head of the steps, he threw it down. It did not go far, appearing to catch in some projection. He tried again with a like result. He pulled it up. The stone was dry. The opening was not, then, a well with water at the bottom.

So Hugh John cautiously put his foot upon the threshold of the secret pa.s.sage, and commenced the perilous descent. He clutched the edge of the top step as he let himself down. It was cold, wet, and clammy, but the stones beneath seemed secure enough. So he continued to descend till he found himself in a narrow staircase which went down and down, gradually twisting to the left away from the light. His heart beat fast, and there was a curious heavy feeling about his nostrils, which doubtless came from the damp mists of a confined place so close to the river.

The adventurous General had descended quite a long way when he came to a level stone-flagged pa.s.sage. He advanced twenty yards along it, and then put out his hands. He found himself in a narrow cell, dripping with wet and ankle deep in mud. The cell was so small, that by making a couple of steps Hugh John could feel it from side to side. At the farther end of it there was evidently a door or pa.s.sage of some sort, but it was blocked up with fallen stones and rubbish; yet through it came the strangest m.u.f.fled noises. Something coughed like a man in pain. There was also a noise as of the feet of animals moving about stealthily and restlessly, and he seemed even to hear voices speaking.

A wild unreasoning fear suddenly filled the boy's heart. He turned and fled, stumbling hastily up the stairs by which he had so cautiously descended. The thought of the black beast, great as a calf, of which Nipper Donnan had spoken, came upon him and almost mastered him. Yet all the time he knew that Nipper had only said it to frighten him. But it was now dark night, even in the upper dungeon. He was alone in a haunted castle, and, as the gloaming settled down, Hugh John cordially agreed with Sir David Brewster, who is reputed to have said, "I do not believe in ghosts, but I am afraid of them."

In spite of all his gallantry of the day, and the resolutions he had made that his prison record should be strictly according to rule, Hugh John's sudden panic took complete hold of him. He sat down under the opening of the dungeon, and for the first time cried bitter tears, excusing himself on the ground that there was no one there to see him, and anyway he could easily leave that part out when he came to write his journal. About this time he also slipped in a surrept.i.tious prayer. He thought that at least it could do no harm. Prissy had induced him to try this method sometimes, but mostly he was afraid to let her know about it afterwards, because it made Prissy so unbearably conceited. But after all this was in a dungeon, and many very respectable prisoners quite regularly said their prayers, as any one may see for themselves in the books.

"You see," said Hugh John, explanatorily afterwards, "it's very easy for them. They have nothing else to do. They haven't to wash, and take baths, and comb their hair, and be ordered about! It's easy to be good when you're leading a natural life."

This was Hugh John's prayer, and a model for any soldier's pocket-book.